


Sick

by DoubleBit



Category: Metalocalypse
Genre: Bad Accents, Hand Jobs, Homophobic Language, M/M, Sibling Incest, Underage Drinking & Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-21
Updated: 2017-02-21
Packaged: 2018-09-25 23:16:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9851234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoubleBit/pseuds/DoubleBit
Summary: Pickles could be like that – kind of disarming when he wasn’t acting like a fucking twat.  They hated each other – officially – but sometimes Seth enjoyed doing regular big brother stuff.or,Pickles has a cold, and Seth is just acting out of the goodness of his heart.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Welp, not super happy with this, but I feel like I've worked it to death. Just another gross fic for my gross ship.

It was just past noon on a Tuesday when Seth let himself in with the key that his parents kept hidden underneath the ugly pet rock that sat in one corner of the front flower-bed. They’d had their own keys – his brother and he – but when Pickles lost two sets within the span of a month, their parents changed the locks and left this single, stupid key in a hiding spot that any delinquent worth his bench warrant could sniff out in thirty seconds or less. Seth had told them as much.

“It’s nat – ya know – _my_ fault that he’s like, too fackin’ wasted to keep track of anything that’s nat a fackin’ body part,” he’d argued, while Pickles sat on the sofa, watching TV and pretending not to hear. (Seth _knew_ he was listening, of course; Pickles never _could_ control that douchey little smirk of his, or the arch of his left eyebrow – his own, wordless way of saying, “Fuck this, and fuck you too.”) And anyway, Seth just _took_ the key for himself, and no one missed it until Pickles came home late one night from a party, wrecked half their mother’s coneflowers rummaging around for it, and then broke his arm trying to scale the rain gutter up to his bedroom window.

Seth didn’t know why Pickles even _bothered_ with parties. They’d crossed paths a couple times – at Skyler Hardy’s house, and in the woods off the Double-C – and as far as Seth could tell, Pickles mostly drank alone and was more likely to get into a fight than a conversation.

“Yer little brother’s a hat fackin’ mess,” Skyler had said with a whistle, while Pickles pulled a tall-boy out of the fridge to press against his cheek. And yeah, it looked like it hurt, but Michael Esposito had to have his fucking _jaw_ wired shut, even though he outweighed Pickles by at least thirty pounds, and while Seth concurred with Michael’s assertion that Pickles was a total fucking faggot, he also had to admit that his little brother knew how to throw a flawless fucking punch.

Pickles was a fuck-up and a drunk and a truancy officer’s wet dream, so Seth wasn’t exactly surprised to find him lying on the living-room sofa, watching MTV in the middle of a school day. He looked disheveled, wrapped up in a comforter, still wearing the too-small baseball t-shirt that he slept in, and at Seth’s entrance gave a half-hearted groan, which Seth chose to ignore.

“Ya know, yer too old for this,” he said, kicking off his Keds just inside the door. “Ya don’t gatta play sick anymore, dood – just fackin’ grow a pair an’ skip class.”

“I _am_ fackin’ sick, you dildo,” Pickles replied, in a voice so raw it sounded painful. He chucked a wad of used tissues in Seth’s direction.

“Jesus, bro – suckin’ dick for beer is really doin’ a number an yer throat.”

Seth waited for a comeback, but Pickles just looked at him dolefully before rolling back onto his side and adjusting the pillow beneath his head. A soda commercial played onscreen – some hot girls on a beach, time-zones away from Tomahawk, Wisconsin. Seth considered his brother – his flushed cheeks and greasy hair, the half-empty bottle of NyQuil and the pile of crumpled Kleenex beside him on the floor. He’d planned to run up to his room, grab his stash and head over to CJ’s house, but Pickles looked so totally _miserable…_ Okay, so Pickles _always_ looked miserable, but today he looked _helpless_ and miserable, and it seemed like a shame to just _leave_ him that way. Seth dropped his backpack onto the floor and leaned over the back of the couch.

“You must really feel like shit, huh?” He reached down to press the back of his hand to Pickles’ forehead, the way he guessed you were supposed to do. 

Pickles swatted him away. “I didn’t know you were a fackin’ doctor,” he rasped.

“Yer so fackin’ _crabby_ when yer sober.” Seth tried again, this time feeling the back of Pickles’ neck. Pickles closed his eyes, but didn’t move.

“What’re you doing home?” he asked.

“I forgat my pipe.” Pickles’ hair was sweaty and snarled in Seth’s fingers, and Seth noticed the first traces of a break-out on his brother’s cheek. “Ya want me to like, make you a drink er somethin’?”

One eye opened and considered Seth carefully, and a wicked grin crept up the corner of Pickles’ mouth. “ _Maybe._ ”

Pickles could be like that – kind of disarming when he wasn’t acting like a fucking twat. They hated each other – officially – but sometimes Seth enjoyed doing regular big brother stuff, like telling the cops that Pickles wasn’t at home, or buying extra weed because he knew Pickles was bound to steal a couple of nugs, or rummaging through their parents’ liquor cabinet, pilfering their mom’s vodka to mix up a screwdriver for his sick little bro. (And maybe something for himself, too.)

“Enabling,” their mom would call it. And yeah, so Pickles had a problem, but it was a problem that Seth understood – (a problem that ran in the family, frankly) – and when he saw Pickles’ face light up at the sight of that tall, cool glass – well shit, what was so wrong with that?

“Thanks,” Pickles croaked, sitting up to take the drink from Seth’s hand, giving it a quick sniff, as though Seth might try to poison or drug him. Which had only happened once, like, for _ever_ ago. He adjusted the blanket around himself, and Seth caught a glimpse of his underwear, realized that Pickles was only wearing that t-shirt and a pair of those dirty-ass tighty-whities that made it into the washing machine about once a month. (He often suspected that Pickles was gross just for the sake of being gross, which made his own sense of intrigue at seeing those nasty, threadbare briefs all the more pathetic.)

Pickles took a sip, then a deep draught, and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. Seth hadn’t really thought about the shirt for a long time – a holdover from the summer before fourth grade, when Calvert enrolled Pickles in Little League, and Pickles got expelled after he yakked all over the catcher from Forest County. “Lightweight Number ‘Leven,” Seth had called him. The jersey was too big for him then – the hem of it hung halfway to his knees, like a dress. The puke had washed out almost completely over the years, and now Pickles wore the thing around the house, acting oblivious to the fact that his belly-button showed whenever he lifted his arms.

(“What da fack are ya lookin’ at?” Pickles had asked him, and Seth found his mouth had gone dry.)

Seth turned his attention to the television. “Whatchya watchin’?” he asked.

“Just a bunch’a music videos,” Pickles replied. “Are you like, headed over to CJ’s, er what?”

Seth shrugged. “I dunno. Hadn’t tat about it. Maybe I’ll just like, hang out here for a while.” He watched Pickles down the last of his screwdriver, then set the glass on the coffee table beside the bottle of NyQuil. “Ya wanna get high?”

“Why’re you being nice to me?”

The question blindsided Seth, which was absurd, since he’d been wrestling with it himself for several minutes now. Pickles looked so fucking _defenseless_ – too exhausted to get up and pour himself a drink, too weak to even leave the room, which was his usual reaction to Seth’s presence. Years ago – before the garage burned down – Seth could never seem to _shake_ Pickles; he was always just _there,_ following Seth around, annoying him with questions, embarrassing him in front of his friends, impervious to the pranks and the put-downs, willing to endure a remarkable amount of physical pain and verbal humiliation if it meant hanging out with his big brother. And now, Pickles couldn’t get away from Seth fast enough – never asked him for advice or help or _anything,_ found the parties on his own and found his own way home, and now when people said things like, “Hey, is Pickles around? I gat those pills I owe him,” or “Dood – do ya think yer brother would wanna join our band?” Seth felt like he’d been left behind somehow.

Bringing Pickles a drink made Seth feel needed, and feeling needed made Seth feel powerful.

“Why’re you such an ungrateful little bitch all the time?” he answered, then shoved Pickles back down onto the couch. “Just fackin’ lee down an’ I’ll be right back.”

Seth took the stairs two at a time. In the hallway, he paused to peer into Pickles’ bedroom – always cold, even in the summer, and it stank like patchouli and puke and dirty laundry. A nylon-string guitar lay across the bed, along with a spiral notebook – open, face-down on the rumpled sheets. Seth itched to pick it up, see what was written inside, but if there was one thing gayer than keeping a journal, it was reading someone else’s. His own room was warmer, cleaner, and smelled like skunky weed and cologne. He hid his stash in the closet, in a Ball jar, and as he unscrewed the top and inhaled the rich scent of it, Seth congratulated himself on his generosity. Good pot was hard to come by in Tomahawk, and the Ziploc bag he’d pulled out he’d been saving for a special occasion – some _indica_ strain that Charlie Madsen brought back from California when he went to visit his dad, and sold to Seth at a hundred-percent mark-up and a guarantee that “you’ll get so high, you’ll think yer fackin’ _dead._ ”

Beneath his bed, Seth kept a box of video tapes, and now he knelt to paw through them, searching for something _he’d_ want to watch if he was stuck inside all day.

“What’s that?” Pickles asked, as Seth slid the cassette into the VCR. He had swaddled himself tightly in the comforter so that only his head stuck out.

Seth glanced at the box. “ _Punk Rock Pussy Riot, Volume 2._ ”

Pickles groaned and pulled the blanket up over his face. “ _Fack,_ dood – don’t you gat a fackin’ TV in yer fackin’ _room?_ ”

“Move yer fackin’ feet.” Seth smacked his brother’s legs and sat down on the sofa. He dropped the Ziploc on the coffee table. “I sweer you’ll like this one – some’a the chicks look kinda like dudes.”

He snorted at his own joke and began packing a bowl. He still hadn’t figured Pickles out, really. Seth called him a queer and a fairy, and he’d heard a pretty nasty rumor – graphic enough to seem credible – from Hunter’s older brother Ryan, who worked nights at the Liquor Store, but he’d also seen Pickles making out with Melissa Bradshaw at the Lincoln County Fair last year, so Seth didn’t know _what_ to think. He’d been waiting for Pickles to ask him about girls, or condoms, or jerking off, and the fact that he never did made Seth feel disrespected somehow – like he didn’t have anything worthwhile to say about any of it. Which he did. He had made a lot of mistakes that Pickles could learn from, if he would just fucking _ask._ But if Pickles would rather catch chlamydia, or spend a whole Saturday driving some fucking chick down to Antigo for an abortion, then that was his problem.

“Dood – what _is_ that? It smells fackin’ a _maz_ ing.” A pair of green eyes peeked over the edge of the blanket and zeroed in on the pipe in Seth’s hand.

Seth coughed, spewing smoke across the room. “Charlie brat it,” he managed between fits. “From Cali _fornia._ ” He held the piece and his lighter out towards Pickles, who took them incredulously and asked,

“Ain’t ya worried I’ll get ya sick?”

“Whatever.”

Pickles took a long hit and stifled a cough, let the smoke pour out from between caged teeth, and passed the bowl back. “It’s rollin’.”

As his high began to unfold, Seth gaped at the television, where a girl with a shaved head and a tongue-stud was going down on a chick with the biggest tits Seth had ever seen, and he started to regret his choices. The sensation of Pickles’ toes wiggling against his thigh made him abruptly anxious, and when he realized that Pickles was looking straight at him, he felt a single bead of sweat roll down his side. It was only a second, he knew, only a glance, but the seconds were dragging and it felt like a stare.

Oh god. He was going to get a boner.

Seth felt himself sink down into the sofa, and into a truly ill-conceived situation. He’d intended the porno as a gesture, and hadn’t thought too hard about anything else. For once in his life, he’d been thinking about someone _else,_ and now what? His gaze dropped to the growing bulge in his jeans, and the girl with the huge tits let out a needy moan, and Seth only dimly heard himself say, “Oh _fuck._ ” His fingers felt wooden as he struggled with his zipper, then sort of prodded at his erection through the cloth of his boxers. Jesus, it was fucking irreparable.

Pickles appeared to be half-asleep – aside from his toes, still working at Seth’s leg – and his chapped lips hung open, the saliva on his two front teeth glinting in the light of the TV screen. The room seemed darker than it had, and in a beat of panic, Seth checked the clock, which to his relief read only 12:52. It would be hours before their mother came home, and longer still before Calvert left his office at the courthouse; a far-away voice urged Seth to leave – just get up and walk out the front door, down two blocks and left on 3rd Street to CJ’s house, where he could play Sega and flirt with CJ’s sister and pretend like none of this had happened. Then Pickles stretched out and laid his feet right over Seth’s fucking lap.

Seth froze. He waited – for Pickles to move away from him again, for time to return to its normal pace, for God to fucking strike him down for thinking that if Pickles was a girl, they’d be at _least_ to second base by now. But all he got was the ball of his brother’s foot rubbing slightly against his dick, and a congested voice teasing, “Dood – you are so fackin’ _weird._ ”

“ _I’m_ watchin’ a fackin’ porno,” Seth argued, waiving at the television. “I don’t even like, _know_ what the fack _yer_ doin’.”

“Ya want me to stap?”

And there was that fucking eyebrow again. This was a challenge, clearly, Seth hesitated. To refuse it meant that he was a coward, and probably a closet case; to accept made him – well, nothing _worse_ than whatever it made Pickles.

“Whatever,” he replied, loathing the strain in his voice as he worked up the nerve to slip his hand under the blanket and halfway up Pickles’ bare leg.

“So ya _don’t_ want me to stap?” Pickles flexed his ankle and increased the pressure against Seth’s crotch.

Pickles was such a fucking _dick,_ fixing him with that fucking _smirk,_ like he just fucking _knew_ that Seth wouldn’t say no. Like he wasn’t even _trying_ to make Seth feel fucking twisted and sick and horny.

Seth swallowed. “Jesus, dood – what the fackin’ hell is _wrang_ with you?”

Suddenly, Pickles sat up, and there was his _hand,_ gripping curve of Seth’s prick through his shorts just a _little_ too hard, his breath an acrid cocktail of orange juice and cough syrup. “Well, like, my older brother’s a total scumbeeg who gives me alcohol and exposes me to fackin’ pornography. What the fack is wrang with _you?_ ”

“Dood – _stap._ ” Seth grabbed Pickles’ wrist, but his grip was weak, his objection unconvincing. The girls on the screen were really going at each other now, and Pickles’ hand was feverishly warm. “This is – this is super facked-up, okee?”

“Would it make ya feel better to like, call me a homo er something?” Pickles’ fingers slid underneath the elastic of Seth’s boxers, and Seth made a shameful sound. Pickles grinned. “Can you imagine if Dad walked in reet now? He’d prably fackin’ shit his pants an’ fall over dead.” He’d found a rhythm now, albeit a slower one than Seth would’ve liked. Tentatively, Seth pressed the heel of his palm against his brother’s briefs, and was relieved to find that at least he wasn’t the only one with a hard-on for a blood relative. Pickles licked his lips, and his smile faded. “Still want me to stap?”

“Don’t be a fackin’ pussy.”

And this wasn’t like, the _weirdest_ thing, right? Like, guys did this shit sometimes? And you could definitely come _back_ from it – like, say some Hail Marys or whatever?

He didn’t know why he _kissed_ Pickles though, especially considering the predictably awful taste of it. And it was gay – it was so much fucking gayer than just like, letting another dude touch your cock for a second – and Seth’s guts lurched for a moment, but then he felt Pickles’ little hum of surprise, Pickles’ hands on his chest, Pickles kind of giving way until Seth found himself on top, his brother looking up at him with wide, dilated eyes, mouth hanging open like Seth had slapped him or something.

“What the fack d’ja do _that_ for?” he asked, sniffling and wiping his nose on his hand.

“To get you to shut the fack up,” Seth answered. “Which is prably like – ya know – the only reason _anyone_ fackin’ kisses you. An’ anyway, you’re s’posed to be – ya know – like, takin’ it easy an’ lyin’ down.”

For once, Pickles didn’t argue, but lifted his head to watch Seth’s hands sliding clumsily over his hips and across his stomach as Seth endeavored to psych himself up for the line he was about to cross. Correctly reading his brother’s expression, Pickles asked, “You afraid of it?” in a tone less mocking than it could’ve been.

“ _No,_ ” Seth insisted, though he didn’t mind when Pickles took his hand and guided it down until his fingers wrapped around a disconcertingly _familiar_ object. He’d always assumed that touching another guy’s dick would feel, like, _slimy_ or something, but it actually felt pretty… _normal,_ kind of warm and velvety, and not really any more disgusting than fingering a girl. Several more seconds passed before Seth dared to _look._

“Is it like that all over?” Skyler Hardy asked once, clapping a hand on Seth’s shoulder to steady himself.

“Is what like what all over?”

“That _hair,_ dood,” Skyler slurred, his eyes following Pickles across the back yard. “I mean, yer brother’s like, what – fackin’ sixteen er something? He’s gatta be like, a total fire-crotch, reet?”

Seth didn’t know why it bothered him. They said worse things than that about each other’s moms all the time. But he hadn’t been able to forget about it, and now Pickles was under him with that stupid t-shirt riding up around his ribs, one leg flung off the couch and the waistband of his undies pushed down to reveal the wild, coppery bush that Skyler had been dreaming of. Seth wondered how many other guys had imagined seeing his little brother like this.

 _He_ certainly hadn’t, but sometimes you just _do_ things, you know? And just because you do something once doesn’t mean you’re like, that _kind_ of person. Seth would have a lot of big words thrown at him over the course of his life, but “premeditated” was never one of them. The bright side to his lack of impulse control was a corresponding lack of self-doubt that meant he could talk his way out of almost anything – or any misdemeanor, at least – which meant that he had no difficulty reconciling his own arousal at giving his brother a hand-job with chiding Pickles for being such a total fucking faggot while he did it.

Not that Pickles seemed to mind. He kept his eyes screwed shut, front teeth clamped down on his bottom lip, squirming in this way that created the illusion that Seth had even a little control over the situation. (The idea that Pickles would voluntarily _submit_ like this made Seth feel awfully vulnerable, suddenly unsure of the _rules_ – it was much easier to wrap his mind around Pickles calling him a dildo piece of shit and punching him in the face.)

Afterwards, staring down at the mess of his own jizz on Pickles’ stomach, Seth asked, “Jesus, bro – how the fack could ya let me do that to ya?”

And Pickles – who’d somehow managed to come mostly on his own face and was wiping at his throat with a Kleenex – rolled his eyes and said, “Yer the one who kissed me an’ made it fackin’ _gay._ ”

“I tat you’d like that kind’a pussy shit.” 

“You don’t give a fack about what I like,” Pickles countered, and shifted uncomfortably between Seth’s legs.

 _You should stay away from Skyler Hardy,_ Seth wanted to say, but he knew that if he did, he might as well wrap Pickles up with a bow and leave him on Skyler’s doorstep. Instead, he only pulled Pickles’ shirt down from where it had bunched up around his armpits. Obligingly, Pickles lifted his hips, and Seth smoothed the cotton across his brother’s stomach, as though that would undo what had transpired. After a moment, he said, “We’re goin’ to hell, huh?”

Pickles’ eyes lit up, and Seth could feel the vibrations of his laughter and the coughing fit it triggered. “Definitely, bro. Like, without a fackin’ doubt.”

***

Of course, Seth forgot to take the tape out of the VCR, and the pile of tissues beside the couch didn’t help to make the scene any less incriminating, but Pickles didn’t rat him out, and when Seth came down with a terrible cold the next day, it was hard for him to be too pissed about it.


End file.
